Search in:

Christopher Knaus

An ice user accused of stabbing his possibly pregnant partner to death in a frenzied attack in her Macgregor home has gone on trial in the ACT Supreme Court.

The Crown says Aleksander Vojneski, 31, a psychologically volatile and violent drug user, was overcome by a "pressure cooker" of building tensions when he murdered Canberra mother-of-three Paula Conlon, 30, in 2012.

It was a relationship that began in troubled surrounds, the pair first meeting in a psychiatric ward in October 2011.

Ms Conlon was recovering from a marriage break-up and a prescription drug overdose, and the Crown says Vojneski was being treated for drug-induced psychosis.

Advertisement

Months later, on the night of 27 March, 2012, Vojneski was with Ms Conlon at her northside home.

It is alleged Vojneski was becoming frustrated by a string of unsuccessful attempts to get drugs. Vojneski had allegedly been drinking, which the Crown will argue tended to make him violent, and had used drugs the previous day.

But he had no money, the Crown said, and became increasingly desperate as he failed to arrange drugs on credit.

Leading up to that night, Ms Conlon, believing she was pregnant, appeared to be trying to wean Vojneski off drugs to turn their lives around.

Evidence also suggests she had just spent $115, the last of her money, on clothes from an online shop.

Ms Conlon was found dead the next afternoon with 11 stab wounds, lying on a single bed in her bedroom.

No one directly witnessed the events of that night. But the Crown says a receipt for the clothes was found ripped up in Ms Conlon's kitchen sink.

Right next to the sink and the torn receipt, a chef's knife was allegedly missing from its block.

Ms Conlon's violent death occurred while a 16-year-old boy played an online computer game in another room of the house.

The teenager was boarding with Ms Conlon, but had two sets of earphones on at the time the killing is alleged to have taken place.

Hodson's daughter: Witness protection not safe

"I feel sorry for anyone coming into witness protection," says the tearful daughter of police informer Terence Hodson after the State Coroner delivered an open finding into his murder and that of his wife Christine in 2004.